A short story of great customer service

I am on a vacation trip to the United States of America right now. This morning, I went from New York City to Boston, MA with one of Amtrak's trains.

My train would leave off New York Pennsylvania Station at 11am. I went from my hostel at Amsterdam Avenue to Penn Station with the subway, taking a 1 train which was my only option. Unfortunately, there was a service interruption that led to some serious delays on the 1 line. I thought about switching to a cab but turned down the idea, fearing there would be no cab available near the subway station.

I arrived at NY Penn no earlier than 10:54am, six minutes before the train would leave. I rushed to the departures board and was in shock when I didn't find the announcement for the train to Boston. This is where my great experience with customer experience comes in.

So I queued up for the customer service desk at NY Penn. Fortunately, there were only two people in front of me and there were enough counters that it was my turn immediately. I went to the officer and asked for help. The dialog turned out something like this:

"Hi, I need to catch the train to Boston in five minutes..."

"Alright, I got your back. Stay calm and listen to me. Go around the corner, take the escalator upstairs, turn right. Look for Amtrak signs and go to track 6E on the left. Good luck!"

I don't know how the employee managed to know all those details immediately, but these were some amazingly fast and precise instructions when I needed them the most. Thanks to this lovely lady, I managed to get to the train less than a minute prior to departure. Sometimes customer service can be really great!